Paddington (2014)
Directed by Paul King
A young Peruvian bear travels to London in search of a home. Finding himself lost and alone at Paddington Station, he meets the kindly Brown family, who offer him a temporary haven.
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The plot is all predictable, broad-strokes stuff — I mean, it’s basically Mary Poppins meets E.T. meets 101 Dalmatians, but with a talking bear — but the inspired comic setpieces set the movie apart.
Paddington (nicely rendered in CGI) is taken in by the Brown family (which may remind more mature viewers of the Banks clan in “ Mary Poppins ”), over the objections of Mr. Brown ( Hugh Bonneville ), a somewhat officious risk analyst.
Sally Hawkins plays the kindly Mrs. Brown, Hugh Bonneville her joyless husband (a role akin to George Banks in "Mary Poppins") and the great Julie Walters sauces up the role of Mrs. Bird, the family's housekeeper.
The Browns’ West London terrace home (with its interior cherry-tree fresco that seems an oblique nod to “Mary Poppins”) is an ever-unfolding designer’s delight.
One location calls to mind the elaborate, dazzling interiors of the Harry Potter films without feeling out of place or breaking things; the rest of the movie presents a comfortable and clean London, recalling the obviously set-bound Mary Poppins both in its stagey artifice and its appropriate softness.
In writer-director King's film, the adoptive human family Paddington finds is played by Hugh Bonneville (Mr. Brown, here a stuffy risk analyst recalling Mr. Banks of "Mary Poppins"), Sally Hawkins (Mrs.
This premise serves adequately as a structuring device, despite such smart-pants sour notes as a riff from the “Mission Impossible” theme during one of Millicent’s more acrobatic wicked deeds.
There are cartoonish action sequences that knowingly borrow from the likes of the “Mission, Impossible” pictures.
But of course the Brown family—including live-in relative Mrs. Bird (Julie Waters), a neat-freak old biddy who correctly diagnoses the problems in the household that Paddington has been instrumental in solving—come to the rescue (cue echoes of “Mission: Impossible”), bonding in the process.
(Do we really need to hear the "Mission Impossible" theme during a daring museum break-in?
She's an uninspired villain who feels airlifted from a "Mission: Impossible" knockoff — a very discordant tone to pair with old-school British storybook charm.
Mostly, the film — with its giant breakaway dollhouse-like set (which might have been inspired by Julien Temple’s 1986 film Absolute Beginners) and its gadgets and Rube Goldberg designed gags — has a distinctly Anderson vibe to it.
Paddington starts out with a black-and-white newsreel back story reminiscent of “Up,” and then borrows liberally from “101 Dalmatians.”
The film takes its first cues from Pixar's Up , setting its stage with an old newsreel of a British explorer, Montgomery Clyde (Tim Downie), leading the first-ever expedition to Darkest Peru (the best example I can give of where the film's sense of humor lies is to point out the unblinking way that no character ever, ever refers to the country as just "Peru", anywhere in the film).
One can also spot some connections to Pete Docter and Bob Peterson’s animated Up (2009) with its adventurer travelogue newsreel footage.
That opening segment is shown in old b&w newsreel footage style, which immediately lets us know that this is a movie that's been made every bit as much for adults as for children (Pixar's "Up" comes to mind).
The film opens with a clever, and "Up"-echoing faux sepia-toned serial, as an explorer (Tim Downie) ventures to darkest Peru, encountering a rare family of bears, helping to teach them English, and giving them a taste for marmalade sandwiches before returning to London, telling them they'll always have a warm welcome if they ever come to visit.
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Even when he unveils the Brown household in a dollhouse-like manner that recalls similar gags in Jerry Lewis's The Ladies Man and Wes Anderson's The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou , Paddington recalls its stylistic forbears at their best: flowing with whimsy, but never at the expense of the beating heart of its human (and animal) characters.
So, yes, there are familiar elements here -- from children's-lit and children's-film classics as varied as 101 Dalmatians, Stuart Little, and Winnie the Pooh, but there's also a broad-and-bizarre stroke of Monty Python-style absurdity and more than a few welcome, modernized-yet-classical touches like a calypso band, D Lime, acting as a chorus to the film's urban adventuring.
The plot is all predictable, broad-strokes stuff — I mean, it’s basically Mary Poppins meets E.T. meets 101 Dalmatians, but with a talking bear — but the inspired comic setpieces set the movie apart.
In the interest of galvanizing the narrative and amping up the peril, King and McColl have devised a cheerfully silly, action-heavy chase plot that cribs heavily from “101 Dalmatians,” complete with its own Cruella de Vil: bleach-bobbed taxidermist Millicent Clyde ( Nicole Kidman ), who’s determined to nab one particular Peruvian breed of bear for her collection.
That ranges from using some tree themed wallpaper in the Browns' household to represent the place and mood of the story at any moment, to fun little bits of homage to past movies ranging from "Singin' in the Rain" to "Raiders of the Lost Ark."
Some of his visuals are even cribbed from the Wes Anderson playbook, as a dollhouse sequence mirrors a device from Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom.
Imaginative production design, which occasionally brings to mind Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, adds to the story's appeal.
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A dollhouse in the attic opens up to reveal all the residents of the Brown household, moving from room to room in a way that directly quotes, as does the musician device, any number of Wes Anderson movies, although The Royal Tenenbaums is probably the most resonant reference.
Certainly there is a degree of action/peril as the Browns head off to and try and rescue Paddington from danger at the Natural History Museum (also an excuse for a great location, probably not used as well since the 1975 classic One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing), but is all played for gambolling laughs.